Megumi
by dungeonwonk
Summary: Why is everybody always beating up Meg? Submitted for your approval, a possible reason, complete with catbusses, DDR and bishie boys.


Meg/Megumi Megumi

By dungeonwonk

Rated: PG-13

xxx

A/N: Why am I writing this when I loathe "Family Guy"? When the only halfway likeable character (Meg) is usually treated like a punching-bag for no apparent reason? I decided to invent a reason. It probably isn't the real reason, but, who's to say…

xxx

Yo was having lunch in the high school cafeteria when he got the text. "Megumi desu."

He texted back: "Ohayou. Ready 4 2night?"

"Hai. Ready 4 competition. And ready 2 go home with u."

Yo did a spit-take that people noticed halfway across the cafeteria. "Where did THAT come from??"

There was a pause that seemed to last forever until the reply came back: "I thot u liked me."

"I do! U r a great person, Megumi. I don't know why your family can't see it."

"They can't! I HATE THEM! I WANT 2 LEAVE THEM ALL 4 EVER!!"

"And u should, but 2nite may not b the night. Let's talk about it after school, k?"

"K."

"Don't feel down, Megumi. U know the truth now, that's the important part. I'll help u figure something out."

"Thanks, Yo."

"Ato de ne."

Yo was angry; not at Megumi, but at her family, who had so beaten the girl down that, instead of displaying her natural talents, she was almost a basket case.

Like her, he hated the Griffins.

xxx

He hadn't realized how bad things were, however, until they met after school. She was all passion and impulse, driven by desperation. He took her to a coffee shop near school, made her drink a cup of green tea, then listened as she poured out her story again. As many times as he'd heard it, he could wait to hear it again; Megumi was worth it, after all. But she was still on the edge of doing something very dangerous with her life. He knew what he had to do; he also knew it was very risky.

He had to go visit a family of Fours.

xxx

He rang the doorbell just as the Griffins were sitting down to dinner. Their daughter hadn't joined them at meals for a week now, and, while another family might have been worried, the Griffins basically let it go. It was Meg, after all, and it wasn't anyone who mattered.

The door opened to reveal Mrs. Griffin, no longer young but not old, either. For a brief instant her eyes filled with dread; she must have been expecting a visit like this for years. "Yes?" she said, a slight shake in her voice.

Before Yo could say anything, a nasal voice bellowed from the next room: "Whatever they're selling, we already have two!"

"Peter, get in here!" She turned back to the visitor. "My name's Lois Griffin."

"I know; Meg's told me about you."

"All right, who the hell would come over at dinnertime?" The voice belonged to a very fat man with glasses. He was followed into the room by an equally fat teenaged son and an infant riding a dog as if it were a pony.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," the guest said, bowing out of reflex. That was one indication that he was from "that side of town." The other indication was his hands, each of which had, unlike the Griffins, five fingers. He was tall, thin, with hair that was just disordered enough, and what used to be called bedroom eyes. On his own turf he was a perfect example of a "bishie boy." "I go to school with your daughter. My name is Yoshitsune."

Meg's father chuckled.

"Pleased to meet you," the woman said, starting to reach out to shake Yoshitsune's hand, then thinking better of it and drawing back her four-fingered hand. "I'm Lois, and this is Peter, Chris, Brian and little Stewie. Is Meg alright?"

Meg's father chuckled a bit louder.

"She's fine, but I'm afraid she might do something rash. She spoke of running away from home tonight."

Meg's father was giggling like a little girl. "Your parents actually named you Shit?"

God, what an idiot, the visitor thought to himself; he's worse than Meg told me. Aloud, he said, "Call me Yo. Seriously, I'm worried about Meg. She might just try it."

"I don't think so. She's up in her room. Isn't she, Chris?"

"I dunno."

"Didn't you look in on her when you got home?"

"I dunno."

Yo handed Lois a card. "Excuse me, but she isn't here. You can find her at this address tonight. If you'll excuse me, I have to get there myself. I hope we can avoid a disaster tonight."

Lois gingerly held onto the card as if she was afraid it would bite her. "Yes; thank you for your concern."

With that, Yo left the house. As soon as he did, Lois was up the stairs to Meg's room as if she was running in the Olympics. A second later they heard a blood-curdling scream.

"Oh my Gawd," Peter yelled, "what's happened?"

Lois ran back downstairs, holding what looked like two human hands.

"Oh, no!" Chris yelled, "Meg's hands fell off!"

"They're not her hands," Lois said, "they're her gloves."

"Gloves?"

"Looks like it's time to tell you all the truth."

"What truth?" Brian asked. "What's wrong with Meg?"

"Look at the gloves. Turn them inside out."

Stewie interrupted. "That'll take forever; Toilet Breath here doesn't have opposable thumbs. Just tell us what's going on!"

"Well, when Peter and I got married, we wanted to start a family as soon as we could. We spent a lot of time trying, didn't we?" she smiled at the fat man.

"Yeh. At the marina…"

"at the bed and breakfast…"

"in the bank vault…"

"at the laundromat…"

"under the stage at the Newport Jazz Festival…"

"Listen, do we really need the Nookie Tour? What does any of this have to do with Meg??"

"Well," Peter said, sounding rather embarrassed, "we tried for over a year, but, well, we couldn't. Lois never got pregnant."

"So, in the end, we adopted."

"ADOPTED?" the others chorused.

"I thought Meg was your daughter," Brian said.

Lois shrugged. "Well, as far as I'm concerned, she still is. Besides, the funniest thing happened after we adopted her. That was when I got pregnant with Chris."

"Whaddya mean, she's adopted?" Chris asked.

"Actually, that's a common phenomenon," Brian explained. "Infertile couples who adopt find almost immediately that they can conceive after all."

"Whaddya mean, she's adopted?" Chris asked.

"It's like there's some psychosomatic barrier to conception."

"Whaddya mean, she's adopted?" Chris asked.

"You see, Chris," Peter began.

"Don't bother, Fat Man. By the time Steven Hawking here figures it out, he'll have enough facial hair for the entire cast of 'The Lord of the Rings.'" Stewie paused; "Males and females."

"You had to get in that last cheap shot, didn't you?" Brian shook his head.

"You're just jealous because you didn't think of it."

"Doesn't anyone here care about Meg?!" Lois screamed.

They had to think about that for a minute. "No," Peter said, "not really. I mean, she's one of them."

"One of WHO?" Brian asked.

"That's what I was saying about the glove. It makes her look like she has four fingers, when, well, she really has five."

"You mean, she's a, a—"

"A Manga-loid," Peter said sadly.

"These days, this arrangement is called a trans-toon adoption. But they swore she'd be normal!" Lois burst into tears.

"Of course she's normal," Brian protested. "Just because of the thing with the fingers."

"It isn't just the fingers!" Lois wailed. "She also left her glasses upstairs!"

Brian, with Stewie still on his back, raced upstairs; they came down with the glasses. "I dunno, Lois, they look ordinary to me."

"Put 'em on," Peter said.

Brian did; he couldn't tell the difference. Everyone else gasped as his eyes appeared to shrink down to pinheads.

"So Meg has known all this time?"

"Of course; we beat into her the importance of keeping up the disguise, so she could look normal."

"Of living a lie, you mean; of denying her own self."

"Brian, you just don't understand!"

"I understand that it's getting late. If we don't get to that, wherever it says on that card, we may never see her again!"

"Come on, everyone; into the car!"

"Hold it!" Peter yelled. "We don't have to run right off. There may be something good on TV tonight."

"I swear, Peter Griffin, that if you don't get up and drive us there, I am out of this house and out of your life! You and I both promised to love Meg as if she were like us, no matter how gross and disgusting she was."

Stewie put his hand over his heart. "Kinda gets you right here, doesn't it?"

"Let's go."

xxx

The drive from one side of Quahog to the other took thirty minutes, but it took the Griffins into a completely different world. Busses that resembled giant cats roamed the streets and jumped from rooftop to rooftop. Holographic images five stories high played out on buildings, making the Griffins' television look like cave drawings. And everywhere were those people, those big-eyed, five-fingered people.

They eventually came to the address, a club in a three-story building. Rather than split up, they all stayed together while they looked for Meg. At first they didn't see her or Yo. They simply passed through room after room of people dancing to different kinds of music. Sometimes fast and frantic, sometimes slow and dreamy, the dancers all ignored the four-fingered visitors among them, even when asked a question.

"So much for their being polite," Stewie muttered as he tried repeatedly to get the attention of a couple slow-dancing in traditional kimono; they only had eyes for each other.

"There you are!" It was Yo, standing at the door of the room they were searching.

"Where is she?" Lois blurted out.

"She's entered in the DDR competition. That's one level up. It starts in five minutes."

"The what competition?" Peter asked.

Nobody bothered to answer him; they just pushed him up the flight of stairs. They went into a room where a platform at one end was lit by spotlights. On the platform, side by side, were two smaller platforms marked out with arrows. A railing stood behind the smaller platforms, and behind it was a gigantic TV screen.

One teenaged bishie boy with very disordered violet-colored hair started speaking into a microphone; his amplified voice drowned out almost every sound in the room. The Griffins didn't understand what he said, until he ended one sentence with the words "Love Shine." As soon as he'd said it, the words appeared on the top of the TV screen, which split down the middle to show, side by side, two Dance Dance Revolution platforms and scoring grids.

The announcer started again, and ended by announcing someone whose name seemed to be Ayane. A tall girl with very wavy hair, and more curvy than a typical high school girl, got onto one of the platforms as if she'd invented the game. Attitude was practically dripping off of her, and the crowd responded with somewhat subdued cheering.

Then the announcer started again, ending with the word: "Megumi!"

The crowd started cheering as Meg Griffin got onto the other platform. Smiling, moving with a kind of smooth grace her family had never seen before, she pulled the knit cap off her head; shining tresses fell down past her shoulders. She unzipped the jacket to her sweatsuit, letting it fall behind her to reveal a slim, well-built body. But the audience really went wild when she whipped off her glasses, and her eyes were revealed to be more than twice their size. This, after all, was who Meg Griffin really was: Megumi, an anime girl.

The announcer started the match, the music cranked up. And the two girls were off.

Ayane was aggressive, working the backstop bar as part of the routine as if it were gym equipment. Her jumps, spins, and flourishes were very impressive. But Megumi was even moreso. Her dance was less athletics and more ballet. She barely put weight on the backstop on the few times she used it, but it seemed to assist her, keep her on the platform, and balance her if she needed it. More importantly, while Ayane's routine declared that she didn't need a partner, Megumi danced a call of joy in life, and an offer to share that joy with some lucky someone.

The music lasted about ninety seconds; the winner was obvious long before the end.

"That's, uh," Chris began.

"That's disgusting," Peter interrupted.

"How could she do this to us?" Lois whined.

"Tenshi da," Yo said, practically in a trance.

"What?" Lois asked.

"She's an angel. Later." Without another word, Yo pushed his way through the crowd congratulating Megumi. She threw her arms around him, seeming happier than any member of the Griffin family could ever remember seeing her.

After a minute, Brian cleared his throat. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Let's just get in the car and go home."

"Without Meg?" Lois asked, startled.

"Face it, this is where she belongs. If she stays, maybe she should. If she doesn't, and she comes home tonight, it's her choice."

"She's not supposed to have a choice!" Peter interrupted.

"Guys," Brian sighed, "let's just talk about it on the way home."

Nobody said a word as they walked to the car. As soon as it started up, however, Chris spoke: "Does this mean Meg isn't really my sister? Because she was looking really hot tonight and—"

Everyone else yelled in unison: "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!!"


End file.
